


Recovery

by TheCrazyFriend



Series: Revenge [2]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2020-12-07 19:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20981306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCrazyFriend/pseuds/TheCrazyFriend
Summary: After the Dark Room Massacre, Max and Chloe, along with the victims of Jefferson and his Dark Room attempt to get some semblance of normal back in their lives. Sequel to Revenge





	1. Chapter 1

Chloe had been the first to be discharged after she had been rushed to hospital, the young woman had escaped the skirmish between Jefferson, Prescott and their victim with hardly any injuries, with only a black eye and badly bruised jaw to show for her encounter with a couple of murderous psychopaths. Chloe had realized once she came to in the hospital that she had gotten off lightly and that she really mustn't continue to disregard her own safety, the blunette had been sneaking toward the barn intending to help Max when she had felt a tap on the shoulder then a fist landed on her face, knocking her down and into the hard ground. She woke up later in the hospital having no idea how much time has passed and with a throbbing eye and jaw. A doctor had been quick to explain that she had been lucky, she had escaped serious injury when she had hit her head on her way down and hadn't even gotten a concussion. “Where's Max?” were the blunt words to come from the anxious blunette  
“Max?” the doctor parroted blankly  
“Yes, my partner in ti... _Ahem_, crime” Chloe elaborated. “Max-ine Caulfield”  
“I have no idea, nobody called Max have been brought into the hospital during my shift”  
“Fuck.” Was Chloe's eloquent reply to the doctor  
“Though you were brought in with another young woman” he indicated the bed next to Chloe's  
Chloe couldn't help but immediately recognize the pixie cut and stylish designer clothes of the blonde who led in the next bed along, “_Icky Vicky_!?” the blunette exclaimed in shock, “oh my god what were you doing there?!” she turned to face the doctor and sighed, despite having her mind blown that she may have somehow helped save _Victoria Chase_ of all people, she had to show a semblance of calm else she knew she may well end up getting admitted again, her history may not have been beneficial to her. “My friend and Icky Vicky here were taken by a sick twisted man called Mark Jefferson. I'm guessing he drugged them both and took them to the Dark Room” a flicker of recognition flickered in the gray-haired doctor who simply looked older than he was, the stress having caught up with him in recent years. “Where they were to be photographed and... Murdered.” The blunette took a few calming breaths. “I went after them, I knew the location of the Dark Room and I was attacked on my way there. Someone tapped my shoulder and gave me a good ol’ fashioned punch to the jaw.” She flexed her jaw which ached like hell. “I was out of it and I woke up here”

The doctor left after Chloe explained what had happened to them but had told the anxious blunette there was no sign of a short freckled brunette in the entirety of the emergency department which was almost abandoned. Chloe covered her face and groaned, _where are you, my sweet girl? _

*****

An ambulance screamed down a narrow track with what looked to be a dilapidated barn retreating into the distance behind. “Holy shit this can't be happening” a male voice mumbled, he was in a muscle car that was following the ambulance closely as he fumbled with his phone, trying to retrieve it from where he had dropped it down the side of his seat in his panic, most of his concentration was focused on following the ambulance ahead of him but he knew if he didn't call his wife immediately there would almost certainly be hell to pay. After what felt like an eternity to the panicking man, he finally managed to get a grip on his phone and hit the speed dial option that would call his wife's cell.  
“Hello?” The familiar Southern drawl spoke, despite it always being slightly tinny the man sighed in relief, “David? Hello?”  
“Joyce. I need you to get off work and go to the hospital”  
“What's... Oh my god, David, what's she done this time?!”  
“No, it's not our troublemaker this time, it's her brunette friend. I just... I... I found her in a hellish place, she... She was all alone in there, drugged with body parts all around her... J-Joyce, you said she was like a daughter to you, s-she needs a mother right now”  
“Oh my god... You mean Max?!” David heard the moment the panic overwhelmed his wife, the innocence getting corrupted. “Max was drugged?! Who the fuck would do something like that?”  
“Mark Jefferson and Sean Prescott, it would seem”  
“Shoulda... Wait, Jefferson? Max's professor?”  
“Uh-huh... Sick dude, I mean seriously. Thankfully... even though i's not official or anything it looks like Jefferson-of-a-bitch and Prescott beat each other to death” _That's putting it mildly_  
“I'm on my way to the hospital”  
“See you soon”

*****

“Mom?!”  
“Chloe?!” both women had exclaimed at the other at exactly the same moment, the same moment as Joyce stepped through the doorway into the hospital room that the receptionist had told Joyce to wait in for Maxine Caulfield. “What the hell are you doing here?! And who's that?”  
“This is icky Vicky, aka Victoria Chase, self-appointed Queen Bee of Blackwell and chair of the Vortex Club. She was here when I woke up” the blunette pulled anxiously on the sleeves of her jacket which she had slipped back on once she had been discharged from the hospital. She had been taking advantage of the second of three beds in the hospital room when her mom had stormed in all anxious. “Did David send you here? Am I in trouble?”  
“Yes, David did send me here but I don't think he knew you were here, he didn't mention it. Chloe, it's Max. Something happened to her and David found her in this dungeon”  
“The Dark Room...” Chloe breathed  
“You know of it?” Joyce had to admit she was pretty surprised by the turn of events  
“Yes. I was just about to do my amazing badass punk thing and storm that bunker when I felt a tap on my shoulder and a fist to my face. I woke up here next to her majesty there, I'm guessing she” the blunette indicated Victoria, “was grabbed before he grabbed Max. Is she okay, mom?!”  
“_He?_ You mean _Jefferson_?” Joyce ignored Chloe's question as much as she hated herself for doing so, she didn't have the answers that Chloe sought  
“Yea, that sick cunt used to drug and kidnap girls to take creepy pictures of them while doped”  
“Sounds... Worrying” Joyce didn't even attempt to scold her daughter for her foul language, had Joyce been in the position Chloe was in, she would’ve called Jefferson a cunt just as easily. In fact, once Chloe had said the words, Joyce found herself unable to think of anything else to call that incredibly sick man  
“Max and I... We think he killed Rachel”

“Well someone killed...” a powerful gruff voice began only to stop in shock. “Wait, Chloe?! What the hell are you doing here, Missy?” David had just entered the room followed closely by a gurney with a pale freckled young woman led on it. She had a tube in her mouth and several bags of fluid hooked up to her.  
Chloe had been about to reply when she had spotted the freckled brunette and the words she had been about to say to her step-father died in her throat


	2. Chapter 2

“_David_?” Chloe gaped at him as he entered the hospital room in a hurry, forgetting to use one of her many derogatory nicknames for the veteran she hated so much. She then moved over to the freckled brunette who was led still and was only breathing due to the machine forcing air into her lungs  
“Chloe, what the _fuck_ happened to your face?!” the Step-Douche demanded as soon as his eyes fell upon the state of his step-daughter's face. Joyce didn't even comment on David’s swearing which made Chloe realize just how horrified Joyce was by seeing her two daughters in hospital, one with a dirty great bruise on the right side of her face and a gigantic lump on the back of her head where she hit it on the ground and the other dependent upon a machine to breathe  
“I was punched in the face” Chloe deadpanned then turned back to her totally unresponsive childhood friend  
“No shit” David replied quickly and frowned at how quickly Chloe seemed to settle into petting Max's hair with far more care than David had ever suspected the punk of being capable of. He hadn’t really seen much of how Rachel and Chloe interacted because they stayed as far away from him as was reasonably possible with their very limited funds  
“I was going to attempt to rescue Max from the Dark Room but I was intercepted and punched in the fucking face” Chloe grumbled, she didn't want to have to split her attention between David and Max  
“Oh. You know Max?” David asked with a raised eyebrow, stating the obvious as he was wondering if the Max he came to the hospital with was _the_ Max. The Max that was Chloe's oldest friend, the Max who left Chloe behind after moving up north to Seattle. “She was in the bunker. Drugged up to an unbelievable degree and completely covered in blood.” He indicated the poor girl who had most of her clothes cut off of her and a gown shoved once her head once she arrived at the hospital. The clothes were completely ruined anyway so that didn't matter too much. A few wires snaked under her gown, monitoring her vitals and an IV was connected to a vein in her arm, pumping in the antidote to whatever drugs Jefferson had used on her, drugs that had seemed to have interacted violently with the brunette hippie's time powers  
“What the hell? David, what the _hell_?” Chloe's eyes had widened and her breath had quickened. Had David not been witnessing it, he wouldn't have believed his stepdaughter to be prone to getting panic attacks.  
“I have no idea. You have some explaining to do since you know about the bunker” David quickly stated in his usual commanding tone  
“Uhm, Max can rewind time?” Chloe countered, her own tone one of hope once she had regained a semblance of calm  
“Now I know you’re crazy” David raised an eyebrow while Joyce choked up her coffee which she had been swallowing at the time  
“Fuck, I don't exactly know how this has happened” she fumbled with her phone, “shit. It's Monday...” _Must’ve been dragged back with Max on one of her rewinds for some reason. Guess that's what changed the timeline, instead of me being in that bathroom, Prescock and Jeffershit must've had the opportunity to take Max... And Victoria instead of being busy dealing with the fallout from the bathroom_  
“Yeaaaaa... Look, I know you've taken a pretty bad blow to the head, believe me, I know that but Max rewinding time?”  
“David. I know you've been spying on me. Me, mom, Rachel, Nathan.” She growled, still pretty pissed off by the revelation. Chloe wasn't thinking, she was just reacting to her anger, the same anger that she had experienced the last time she confronted him. Joyce looked at him with a furious expression, clearly, it was news to her as well  
“H-how?!” the veteran spluttered, immediately forgetting about Chloe's weird comment about Max and time powers  
“I found out awhile ago” Chloe shrugged. _Probably shouldn't have outed Max's ability without her saying it's okay. She'll probably wipe this entire timeline but better keep up the act of distraction just in case she doesn't_. The blunette cracked her knuckles. “Once I find Jefferson, he's gonna wish he never started abducting girls”  
“Chloe,” David began. “Jefferson is dead. He and Prescott must’ve beaten the shit out of each other, so badly that they both died from their injuries.  
“Did you check the security camera footage?” Chloe asked, much to David’s surprise  
_Guess she really has been in the bunker..._ “No, Chloe. The entire place looks like a bomb hit it, all the cameras were crushed beyond recognition and the computer was in a million tiny pieces. No internet connection either” David added with a small amount of reverence. It wasn't often that David saw that kind of destruction in a bunker, not even when he was in the military  
“And Max was unharmed?” _Oh no, Max. What the hell did you do...?_  
“No not really, she was drugged and on the verge of consciousness for the entire ride here. She finally lost all consciousness when we were about a minute out from the hospital, the doctors managed to get her heart and breathing going again but we almost lost her. Other than that she was uninjured, which is rather odd considering the huge cracks in the stone beneath where Max was tied up”  
“I'm not sure it was just drugs that did this...” Chloe muttered, moving her hand through Max's hair, ruffling it slightly. _Oh, Max, what the fuck did they force you to do?_ Chloe didn’t dare say another word until Joyce and David left to go home due to the conclusion of visiting hours after which she kept talking to Max in low tones, telling her about her adventures with Rachel Amber, telling her about the times she played the tabletop game with Steph, Mikey and Drew over the years, telling her all the million and one little things that happened in her life and telling her the hundreds of thousands of times she thought about her best friend who should've been by her side

Chloe was still there at two in the morning when Victoria groaned and opened her eyes blearily. “Hey, Icky Vicky” she smirked playfully at the groggy and confused pixie blonde who was rather shocked to see _Chloe_ of all people waiting in her hospital room, much less a Chloe with a massive bruise across most of the right side of her face


End file.
